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Baccarat - History &
Information

A brief history of Baccarat

The game of Baccarat is of French origin where the spelling is 'Baccara'
- English speaking countries added the 't' for no good reason that can
be surmised. Despite what you might read on other websites, the game is
a relatively recent addition to the realm of card games and most likely
appeared in the 1800s. Baccarat soon became extremely popular in nineteenth
century France, maintaining for some reason a reputation of high stakes
and 'class' which still lingers today in Casinos around all parts of the
globe.

No book that this author has unearthed on the subject gives a definitive
answer as to how and why it was invented but the general consensus is
that Baccarat is a simply a child of the family of games that include
Blackjack, Pontoon, Vingt-et-un and is perhaps the direct ancestor of
earlier games such as Basset and Faro.

Whereas
most animals and games evolve into more complex and forms over time, Baccarat
does not follow the typical pattern at all. In fact, Baccarat is so simple
that were the element of gambling not present with the adrenalin-induced
highs of winning and the visceral sweaty fear of losing, the game would
be an extremely tedious one indeed. Most children over 5 would dismiss
it as very boring after a few minutes.

Shown to the right is a beautiful Baccarat pallette used for dealing,
collecting and flipping the cards over.

The first mention of Baccarat in the English language is from the Daily
Telegraph of 13 January 1866 and the game quickly became popular in England
and the USA after that time. The notion of Baccarat being a high-class
game continued and when Ian Fleming wrote the first James Bond book, Casino
Royale in 1953, the entire plot is based around an extremely high-stakes
game of Baccarat. Bond plays Baccarat regularly and there is no doubt
(in the books at least) that he is from the upper echelons of society.
The villain of the piece, 'Le Chiffre' chooses Baccarat however, because
the stakes get high very quickly and he needs to raise money in a hurry.
At the start of the 21st century, the film of Casino Royale replaced Baccarat
with Texas Hold'em Poker - a sign of the times
if ever there was one.

Baccarat often has an image of being played only in 'bricks and mortar' casinos. These days, with so many casinos now online, games of Baccarat are big business for internet gamblers. Being easy to play, it can be enjoyed any time, anywhere in the world.

Baccarat origins - Basset and Faro

Some books and websites assert that Baccara came to France from Italy
in the fifteenth century. This is misleading and probably what they mean
is that the game of Basset came from Italy to France in the fifteenth
century. Basset is a banking game that was played as follows. Each player
is dealt 13 cards face up and on each he can place a stake. The banker
then deals cards face up alternately to two piles in front of him. To
start, the banker deals a single card and wins the stakes placed on any
cards of the same value. The banker then deals cards in pairs - for the
first card of the pair dealt, the banker wins the stakes placed on any
cards of the same value but for the second card of the pair, the player
wins the value of the stake if the value matches. The dealer continues
dealing pairs until all stakes are gone.

This is fairly simple stuff but the sting in the tail is that when a
player wins a stake, instead of taking the money, he can instead leave
the stake there and if he wins a second time, the bank must pay seven
times the value of the stake. This can be repeated with the winnings rising
to 15, 30 and 60 times the value of the initial stake.

To
the greedy, the temptation to leave the stake there must have been pressing
but, as is clear after a moments thought, the chances of winning at those
high odds diminishes drastically - and therein lies the loss of many a
fortune and the appalling reputation that Basset came to have. Richard
Seymour in his improved version of the 'Compleat Gamester' in 1725 said
"the dimmest eye may easily see, without a pair of spectacles, how
much and considerable the design of this court game is in the favour of
the Banker".

Basset eventually was replaced by its descendent 'Faro' which was similar
but added some new rules such as the ability to bet for or against a particular
rank appearing and half the stake going to the bank when the bank dealt
a pair of cards of the same value. By the nineteenth century, Faro was
the world's most popular Casino game but by 1900 it had been replaced
by Blackjack and Baccara.

Baccarat Basic Rules

Each
hand starts with 2 cards and a third may optionally be dealt. The values
are summed with court cards counting as zero and the nearest to 9 wins.
Where the sum goes beyond 9, the value returns to 0 instead of going to
10 e.g. A pair of cards 6 and 7 has a value of 3, not 13 and three cards
9, 6 and 9 have a value of 4. Just ignore the leading digit where the
sum is 2 digits.

Shown to the right is a perfect score. The player was dealt a 5 and 6
giving a score of 1 so a third card was requested and luckily it was 8
making a score of 9. This would usually win the round.

Yes, it's that simple. The complexity lies only with the more trivial
aspects of the game - the nomenclature, the etiquette, the rules for betting
and the order of play etc. The rules of the house usually make the game
even more simplistic because most house rules generally require both player
and banker to play the odds. The player's only freedom of choice is normally
whether or not to ask for a third card when the sum is 5.

Baccarat - with two tables

This game is known in England as "Baccara Banque" or just "Baccara"
and in France as "Baccara a deux tableaux" - Baccara with two
tables. It isn't usually played in the USA. The rules were described by
Seymour in an 1897 Hoyle and were definitive at the time although different
Casinos will have different house variations of the rules. The reason
for the name is that the non-banking players are split into two halves
- one half being the players to the right of the banker and the others
those to the left. For each deal a representative is chosen from each
half to play against the banker. To begin with these are the players either
side of the banker but when a player loses, the privilege passes to the
next player along and so on until all on that side of the table have played
and the representative duties return to the player next to the banker
again.

Players
usually bid to decide who is going to provide the bank and the bank is
held for the duration of the cards in the shoe or until the banker chooses
to relinquish it (whether due to bankruptcy or otherwise). To start, the
banker places the amount to be played for on the table and each player
in turn has the right to say 'Banco', and thus challenge the banker to
play one-on-one for everything he has staked in one go.

To the left is shown the table for Baccarat with two tables. The central
betting areas allow spectators to place a bet.

If there is no Banco, each side of the table contributes stakes to the
amount of the banker's stake and the banker then deals two cards to himself,
and to the two representatives. If any of the banker or players have a
total of 8 or 9, it must be shown at once and the two other hands are
also then shown and bets are paid accordingly.

Otherwise, each of the three is given a chance to take a third class
face down starting with the player to the banker's right and ending with
the banker. If neither player accepts a third card, then the banker must
take a third card. Any third card is dealt face up and then all hands
are shown and bets paid accordingly. If player and bank have the same
total, it is a stand-off and no money is exchanged.

Baccarat - Chemin de Fer

In
France, this version of the game is called Baccara a un tableau (Baccara
with one table) but in the US/UK it is generally just called 'Chemin de
Fer'. Seymour mentioned this as a variation of Baccarat, the implication
being that the double-table game came first.

To the right is shown the layout for a Chemin de Fer Baccarat table

This version of Baccarat differs in two main ways to that of Baccarat
a deaux tableaux. Firstly, for each deal unless someone goes 'Banco',
the banker plays only against the player to the banker's right and the
banker pays or is paid by all the players. Secondly, the bank changes
hands much more regularly when the dealer loses a coup, passing to the
player on the banker's left.

Baccarat - Punto Banco

This
version of Baccarat is originally from Latin-America where it spread via
Cuba to become the most popular form of the game played in the USA. So
as to utterly confuse everyone in the rest of the world, Americans often
refer to it as "Baccarat-Chemin de Fer'.

To the left is shown the perfect Baccarat hand. This is unbeatable..

The game is very similar in play and again the main difference surrounds
the bank which in this version is always held by the house or casino.
Each deal pits the banker's hand against the player's hand - and players
simply decide whether to bet on one or the other. The person who bets
the most for the player's hand gets dealt the cards and plays them but
from a betting point of view this person is no different to any of the
other players who bet on the player's hand. The shoe of cards does still
pass from player to player but this person is strictly a dealer only and
doesn't bankroll the betting. The dealer is otherwise no different to
any of the other players and may bet on either the player's hand or the
dealer's hand, too.

Links

Baccarat is not the hugely popular game that it once and so information
sites on the Internet are not prevalent. However, it is still a high-rolling
casino game and so there are plenty of casino
websites on the Internet that allow Baccarat to be played on-line.